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6
Ethics, Self- Interest, and the Public Good
we were in turned out to be STOLEN. It was an exact duplicate in style and color
of the campaign car, and the keys Tom had given me happened to fit it, too. The
manager of the Carolina Hotel, who owned the car, had called the police. I asked
the police to let me make one phone call, but of course I did not tell him whom
I intended to call, as he didn’t have any idea that it was Mrs. Sanford with me in
the car. I called Tom, who checked with Terry, and the message Tom got was “ Get
Margaret Rose out of there as fast as possible and forget about Joel!”
Margaret Rose, Terry, Tom and I joked about that near- mishap for the next
forty- seven years. Perhaps the slight guilt they all felt about the incident was a rea-son
they didn’t forget about Joel. When Terry won and took office, Tom assumed
his role as the Governor’s Administrative Assistant. A year or so later, Terry asked
me to join Tom in the Governor’s Office as the Governor’s Legal Assistant. Tom
was the guardian of the front door of the Governor’s Office and I was known for
letting people, such as Ralph Scott, go around Tom by letting them into the Gover-nor’s
Office through the back door, which is where my office was.
In the ensuing 54 years, our friendship has grown ever deeper, our respective
careers have been continuously entwined, and my admiration for the way Tom
lived his values has grown and grown and grown. There has never been much to
be improved upon about Tom, but I confess that I tried repeatedly to widen his
horizons where fine wine is concerned. He was then— and still is— a devotee of
Pepsi Cola, so much so that Pat McBane, now Mrs. Bruce Squires, gave him a
nickname as “ the Pepsi Cola Kid.” That did not stop me, however, from trying to
educate him about wine. One evening at the original La Residence here in Chapel
Hill, I asked Tom to describe to our waiter the kind of wine he preferred, which
he said was white, light and slightly sweet, to which the waiter responded with an
acknowledging German- like click of his heels, “ Oh, that sounds like one of those
unpretentious German wines.” Which it certainly was. After that, I abandoned my
wine crusade with Tom.
Tom and I have had almost no differences of opinion in those 54 years. So far

6
Ethics, Self- Interest, and the Public Good
we were in turned out to be STOLEN. It was an exact duplicate in style and color
of the campaign car, and the keys Tom had given me happened to fit it, too. The
manager of the Carolina Hotel, who owned the car, had called the police. I asked
the police to let me make one phone call, but of course I did not tell him whom
I intended to call, as he didn’t have any idea that it was Mrs. Sanford with me in
the car. I called Tom, who checked with Terry, and the message Tom got was “ Get
Margaret Rose out of there as fast as possible and forget about Joel!”
Margaret Rose, Terry, Tom and I joked about that near- mishap for the next
forty- seven years. Perhaps the slight guilt they all felt about the incident was a rea-son
they didn’t forget about Joel. When Terry won and took office, Tom assumed
his role as the Governor’s Administrative Assistant. A year or so later, Terry asked
me to join Tom in the Governor’s Office as the Governor’s Legal Assistant. Tom
was the guardian of the front door of the Governor’s Office and I was known for
letting people, such as Ralph Scott, go around Tom by letting them into the Gover-nor’s
Office through the back door, which is where my office was.
In the ensuing 54 years, our friendship has grown ever deeper, our respective
careers have been continuously entwined, and my admiration for the way Tom
lived his values has grown and grown and grown. There has never been much to
be improved upon about Tom, but I confess that I tried repeatedly to widen his
horizons where fine wine is concerned. He was then— and still is— a devotee of
Pepsi Cola, so much so that Pat McBane, now Mrs. Bruce Squires, gave him a
nickname as “ the Pepsi Cola Kid.” That did not stop me, however, from trying to
educate him about wine. One evening at the original La Residence here in Chapel
Hill, I asked Tom to describe to our waiter the kind of wine he preferred, which
he said was white, light and slightly sweet, to which the waiter responded with an
acknowledging German- like click of his heels, “ Oh, that sounds like one of those
unpretentious German wines.” Which it certainly was. After that, I abandoned my
wine crusade with Tom.
Tom and I have had almost no differences of opinion in those 54 years. So far